Phillip Young

Art Presence Member Artist Phillip Young

Phil Young at his drawing board when he was teaching art.

Phillip Young is a painter, sculptor and traditional animator. Growing up as the only child of divorced parents, he became imaginative and independent as he went through a changing cast of parental figures in foster home situations, eventually being cared for by grandparents in Central California.

The vast, open prairie spaces of the area allowed for expansion of his imagination, and he found he could express his daydreams in the form of drawings. His art was the one ability he was praised for from his earliest recollections. After high school he moved south to take a job, was married, then enlisted in the U.S. Army. There he worked as an Army Artist, his first paid job as an artist.

Finishing an undergraduate degree in Illustration through the G.I. Bill, he was hired as a trainee animator by Disney Studios in Burbank, California, progressing to a Feature Animator position at the studio. Working through the 80s & 90s, Phil earned seventeen screen credits in some of Disney’s most successful features. In the early 2000s, with the rise of digital media, Phil left the animation industry to teach. He was hired by Savannah (Georgia) College of Art & Design as an animation professor in a program rated as one of the best among private schools.

Earning a Master‘s degree in Sequential Art while teaching, he then headed for Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he taught at the Southwest University of Visual Arts. There he instructed in Animation as well as Fine Arts and Illustration. While in New Mexico, he found his way back to painting, beginning with southwest subjects, mixing in scenic, figurative, and mythological themes.

Phil and his wife now reside in Central Point, Oregon. The move has subsequently added coastal and other northwest subjects to his body of work. Please visit Phil’s website at www.artistphillipyoung.com